Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, who played a large role in last year’s unsuccessful Vikings stadium push, is complaining that the Twin Cities business community, despite publicly wanting a new stadium, is providing “weak” and “hollow” leadership.

Bakk said there are few indications that business leaders will back any tax increase needed to help build a new stadium.

“They say they support a stadium, but then they say, ‘But we’re not going to support new tax increases,’ “ said Bakk. “OK, then how exactly are you going to pay for the [state] bonds” that may have to be issued to help pay for the project?

David Olson, president of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, shot back: “I think he knows better.

“We’re not interested in a new tax to do [the stadium],” he said. “We still think there’s a possibility of getting there. . .with both reducing the construction costs and some creative financing.

“To say it’s hollow, I don’t think is fair,” said Olson.

“I think some of us have been working on this reasonably hard and are just as frustrated as other people that we haven’t been able to find the answer, but it’s not for a lack of trying,” he added.

A Duluth native who just barely lost Virginia's GOP gubernatorial primary said that politicians have not gone far enough in condemning the left for violence during a rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville. "I think that the left is going to try to use this as an excuse to crack down on conservative free speech," said Corey Stewart. "I think they're going to try to use this as an excuse to remove more historical monuments."